20 Historical Figures Who Were Totally Misunderstood

20 Historical Figures Who Were Totally Misunderstood

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re talking about people from the past you think you know. We’ll be looking at historical figures whose reputations or achievements were misrepresented or misunderstood – either by their contemporaries, or by later history.

Oliver Cromwell

He was born in 1599 to what we might call a middle-class family, and he rose to become one of England’s most powerful and controversial leaders. Cromwell helped overthrow King Charles I in 1649, turning the country into a commonwealth with no monarch, and ruled as Lord Protector starting in 1653. He enacted strict Puritan laws, and his maniacal determination to conquer Ireland killed thousands of people. But he also ended the war with the Netherlands, invited the Jewish people back into England 360 years after they’d been banished, and even turned down the role of king when it was offered to him. Depending on who you ask, Cromwell was either a visionary champion of democracy and religious liberty or a ruthless tyrant.

Marie Curie

Today we know Curie as one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived, and still the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. But during her lifetime, she dealt with constant sexism from male colleagues who either ignored her achievements or tried to credit her husband instead. When she applied to the prestigious French Academy of Sciences in 1911, she was denied membership just because she was a woman. The Academy didn’t admit its first woman until 1962. On top of all that, as a Polish woman living in France, she faced xenophobia and antisemitism from critics and the press – and she wasn’t even Jewish. She persevered despite the prejudice, leaving behind a legacy as one of history’s greatest scientists.

Claude Monet

Though he’s now hailed as the inventor of Impressionism, Monet didn’t always enjoy such a glowing reputation. When he and his colleagues first exhibited their work in the 1870s, critics trashed it. Monet’s loose brushstrokes, vibrant colors, and focus on fleeting light were considered sloppy and unfinished. Some even thought it was a slap in the face to traditional painting. In fact, the term Impressionism came from a critic mocking Monet’s painting, “Impression, Sunrise,” as little more than a sketch. Many saw the style as radical and unserious, and dismissed it as the work of an amateur. However, we now understand Monet to be a true innovator, especially in the use of light and color. His vision redefined modern art.

Emily Dickinson

She’s often portrayed as a tragic recluse who was obsessed with death. The reality was very different. It’s true that during the last two decades of her life, Dickinson almost never left her family’s estate. But according to her sister, that’s just how she liked things. While caring for her sick mother, Dickinson found that simply being around her books and the beautiful gardens around her house suited her. She still had a vibrant social life – she wrote over 1,000 letters to friends all over the country. And while death is a frequent theme in her poems, she also wrote many about flowers, her Christian faith, spiritualism, and other abstract topics. Turns out, being an extreme introvert doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.

Nikola Tesla

You’ve heard the name Tesla, and you probably know that he was an eccentric man with some peculiar habits. You might have even heard about his financial troubles and his less-than-cordial relationship with Thomas Edison. But do you know what Tesla actually contributed to modern science? His work on alternating currents completely revolutionized electrical systems worldwide, making our modern power grids possible. He also conducted experiments and invented devices that still sound like science fiction today, like Tesla coils, which transmit electricity without wires. Was he kind of a weird guy? Yeah, but aren’t most geniuses?

Hypatia

She lived in Alexandria around 400 AD and was widely respected as a brilliant mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher. She worked as a teacher, counselor, and even an advisor to the Roman governor of the region. In the year 415, she was murdered by an angry mob, either for political or religious reasons – the jury is still out. 1400 years later, the Victorians became obsessed with her as a tragic martyr, a weak and helpless victim, and even an erotic heroine. They painted nude portraits of her, wrote romantic novels about her, and used her death to stir up anti-Catholic sentiments. Even today, artists and filmmakers continue to misrepresent Hypatia to serve their own ends.

Galileo Galilei

He didn’t invent the telescope, but he did make major improvements to it. This enabled him to discover Jupiter’s moons, prove the Milky Way was packed with stars just like our sun, and even show that Venus had phases. Galileo’s observations of the universe made him confident that the Earth orbited the sun – not the other way around – which got him in big trouble with the Catholic Church. His infamous trial and house arrest tend to dominate his legacy, overshadowing just how groundbreaking his actual science was. Even after the Church banned all his books and forbid him from ever publishing more, he continued researching, experimenting, and writing. In the scientific world, Galileo is often named alongside Einstein as a father of modern physics.

Vlad the Impaler

Also known as Vlad Dracula, the Prince of Wallachia did some horrible things that would qualify as war crimes in the modern day. However, most of the atrocities attributed to him probably never happened. He earned his nickname by impaling his enemies’ corpses on stakes – including civilians. But the stories of him drinking blood, nailing people’s turbans to their heads, and other horrors were mostly written long after his death. Vlad definitely wasn’t a vampire and didn’t even truly inspire Bram Stoker’s character of Dracula. Stoker wrote his novel without knowing much about Vlad and likely just used his name because he was associated with Romania. Vlad is actually considered a national hero in Romania for successfully fighting off the Ottoman Empire.

Genghis Khan

Like Vlad Dracula, the first khan of the Mongol Empire is typically portrayed as nothing but a ruthless conqueror, but the reality is much more complicated. In his quest to conquer the world – yes, he actually believed he was destined for world domination – his army killed millions of people. But he also got a lot done. He created a postal system and trade routes that connected huge regions of Eurasia, enacted legal reforms to protect women, and outlawed the kidnapping of brides. Khan was also a major proponent of religious freedom, which was rare for the early 13th century. Like Dracula, today he’s considered a hero in his homeland.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Depending on which biography you read or movie you watch, you might think of Mary Stuart as a schemer and conspirer, a tragic failure, or a naive romantic. But as the cousin of Elizabeth I, she had a claim to the English throne, which put her at the center of nonstop political drama. She technically inherited the Scottish crown at just six days old, though she didn’t actually rule as queen until she was 19. There were numerous plots against her from both the English and the Scots, and Elizabeth was paranoid that either Mary or one of her children would try to steal the throne from her. Mary was forced to navigate an incredibly dangerous political environment that ultimately resulted in her execution.

Thomas Edison

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb. Alessandro Volta beat him to that by 78 years. In fact, many inventors developed electric lamps before Edison began working on one. He did co-create a filament that lasted much longer than others, making the lightbulb commercially viable. But the majority of his 1,093 patents were for things invented by people working for him – not by Edison himself. He was known for stealing credit for others’ ideas, and even sued people for their patents. When Tesla’s alternating current system started to become more popular than Edison’s direct current, Edison tried to turn public opinion against the Serbian. There’s no question Edison was brilliant, but he always looked out for #1.

The Buddha

Like many important religious figures who lived thousands of years ago, it’s hard to know what’s true about the Buddha and what’s a myth. But we can tell you one thing for sure: The smiling fat Buddhas you often see in Chinese restaurants aren’t the original Buddha, aka Siddhartha Gautama. That’s Budai, real name Qieci, a Chinese monk who lived around 2,000 years after Gautama and is often nicknamed the Laughing Buddha. Westerners tend to romanticize, oversimplify, and straight up misunderstand Buddhist teachings, particularly concepts like karma and enlightenment. In reality, the Buddha’s ideas were complex, and some modern adherents devote their entire lives to fully understanding his path to enlightenment.

Pocahontas

Don’t take your history lessons from Disney movies. Pocahontas wasn’t even her real name. She was born Amonute and was also called Matoaka – Pocahontas was a childhood nickname that probably meant something like “playful one.” She was around 11 when she met John Smith, and while she and other Powhatan people did bring the colonizers food and kept them from starving to death, she didn’t save him from execution. Smith made that story up. Pocahontas was kidnapped by the English in 1613 and pressured into converting to Christianity. She later married the merchant John Rolfe, who may have truly loved her, and they had a son. But she died of an illness at just 20 or 21 years old.

Sacagawea

Most Americans know her only as the guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but even that little factoid isn’t really accurate. Sacagawea was a member of either the Shoshone or Hidatsa nation. At around 13, she was sold into marriage to a French-Canadian trapper named Charbonneau, along with another Indigenous girl. The three were hired onto the expedition as interpreters – Sacagawea only helped with navigation a few times. She gave birth to her first child during the exploration, and according to William Clark, having a Native woman and a baby with them was enough to show other tribes that they were peaceful. After she died of an illness at around 25, Charbonneau gave up their kids for adoption to Clark.

Anne Boleyn

She’s usually portrayed as the conniving temptress who seduced Henry VIII and convinced him to abandon the Catholic Church. That last part is technically true, but there was a lot more to Anne Boleyn. She captivated King Henry with her intelligence and wit, and she knew how to play politics at court. She was a major proponent of religious reform and of translating the Bible into the common people’s language. Anne wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, but unfortunately, 16th century society wasn’t kind to bold women. When she gave birth to a daughter instead of a son shortly after their marriage, Henry quickly started to tire of her, and trumped up a reason to have her executed after just three years.

Niccolò Machiavelli

To call someone Machiavellian means that they’re manipulative, un-empathetic, and overly ambitious. You can probably think of some people who fit that description. But the term has little to do with the real Machiavelli. He was an Italian Renaissance philosopher, historian, and political advisor. His most famous work, “The Prince,” describes various ways to gain power, both through virtue and through evil deeds. Scholars still debate whether “The Prince” was more of a manual or just a description of reality. More than 400 years after he died, an American psychologist named Richard Christie started studying these ambitious extremist types. He was fascinated by Machiavelli’s writings on power, and used some of the descriptions to develop a scale that he called Machiavellianism.

Vincent van Gogh

He was the definition of a tortured artist – and sadly, that might be the only thing you know about him. Van Gogh suffered from mental health struggles all his life, but he also had an immense influence on the world of modern art. Van Gogh’s use of bold color and thick brush strokes were radical, which is one of the reasons he was so underappreciated during his time. His work was a precursor to the Expressionist movement, which portrayed a distorted reality to evoke deeper emotional truths. He produced more than 2,000 paintings, including some that are now among the most famous in the world, like “The Starry Night.” Yet he only sold one painting while he was alive.

Mary Magdalene

Talk about people who were done dirty by history. Thanks to a sermon by Pope Gregory I in 591 AD, many western Christians believe that Mary Magdalene was a sex worker. Gregory incorrectly conflated her with the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’s feet in the gospel of Luke. But there’s no biblical or historical evidence for this. In reality, she was probably pretty well off, since we know she supported Jesus financially. In the apocryphal texts, Mary Magdalene is described as the most beloved of Jesus’s disciples and an important leader in early Christianity. At least the Eastern Orthodox Church gets it right. They have always taught that she was an upstanding woman, considered equal to Jesus’s apostles.

Marie Antoinette

She was the snobby, out-of-touch queen who supposedly said, “Let them eat cake,” right? As a young and probably naive Austrian princess married into the French court, she was an easy scapegoat for France’s financial problems. But the country was already drowning in debt when she arrived at the age of 15. France was in the midst of political turmoil, and many critics were determined to take it out on Marie. Her spending and gambling habits were exaggerated, while her charitable work was ignored. Much of what we think about her today is the result of the smear campaigns waged against her in her own time. And she never said, “Let them eat cake.”

Cleopatra

She spoke nine languages, navigated incredibly tense political alliances, and served as the last pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. Now all people want to talk about is how hot she was. Pop culture of the 20th century fixated on her relationships with Mark Antony and Julius Caesar and mostly ignored her actual achievements. She was a great military commander and an active administrator who had to handle all the usual crises that come with being a monarch. Cleopatra was brilliant, powerful, and determined, and yes, two Roman leaders fell in love with her. But she was far more than just a pretty face.

Did you know the real story behind any of these important figures? Or did you fall for the myths too? Let us know in the comments.